Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Film Review: Hack-O-Lantern (1988)

In my quest to watch every Halloween-themed horror flick I can get my hands on, I decided to give the obscure Hack-O-Lantern
a whirl. This film combines one of my favorite subgenres of horror,
satanic cults, with my favorite holiday, Halloween. What could go wrong,
right?

The film opens with a young boy named Tommy as he is visited by his
friendly grandfather on Halloween. Grandpa gives him his pick of
pumpkins as well as an ominous looking pendant. Tommy’s family doesn’t
like grandpa visiting his grandson and Tommy’s father goes after good
ol’ grandpa to give him a piece of his mind. However, grandpa isn’t as
nice as he seems…he’s actually the leader of a satanic cult and they
dispatch Tommy’s dear old dad right quick.

The film then jumps ahead several years to the eve of Tommy’s 18th
birthday that happens to coincide with Halloween. Grandpa has grand
plans for Tommy’s initiation into his satanic cult, but Tommy’s
beleaguered mother pleads with him to reconsider. Also concerned for
Tommy’s well-being are his younger sister and brother, who is a rookie
cop.

With Halloween celebrations in full swing, a robed, Devil-masked
killer starts murdering townsfolk. Can Tommy’s family stop him from
joining his Grandpa in the Dark Arts or are they already too late?
At least the title got it right…HACK-O-Lantern
is an apt title for this painfully silly “horror” movie. Good god, this
movie felt like it dragged on and on though it clocked in at under an
hour and a half. It had its entertaining parts (more on these later),
but overall this is a serious piece of cinematic doody. The first
glaring evidence of this was the ridiculous acting from Hy Pyke, who
played Grandpa. Are all Satanist leaders this effeminate and
non-threatening? And then we have the actor who played Tommy, Gregory
Scott Thomas (whom you might recognize as Mac’s father on the hilarious
TV show, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia).
Tommy is supposed to be nearing 18 in the film, but Scott Thomas is
seriously mis-cast as he looks like a ‘roided out, 30-year-old jock
rather than a young teenage follower of Satan.

Then, there are all the wacky and weird scenes throughout the movie.
These are the “entertaining” bits I mentioned above. First is a
seriously strange dream sequence/metal video that features an exotic
voodoo-like dancer (check her out on the flick’s cover above) who, 1.)
has multiple arms like a Hindu goddess, and, 2.) shoots horrible-looking
lasers out of her eyes that zap the band members. This is a seriously
WTF scene, but wait! It gets better…There’s the whole branding scene
where nubile young Satan worshippers get their butts branded with a
pentagram, another horrendous dime store metal band that screeches
during a Halloween party that features random strippers and a five
minute sequence of a “comedian” doing stupid impressions…of turkeys. Not
to mention the amount of devil’s horns the characters throw
around…except instead of the traditional holding up of just pointer and
pinky fingers to hail the devil, the characters hold up pinky, pointer
AND thumb…which actually means “I love you” in sign language and NOT
“hail Satan”. Those silly satanists! Seriously, though, Grandpa, Tommy
and other cult members throw the horns around non-stop…so much that you
could in fact make a drinking game out of their appearances, taking a
shot every time someone flashes the devil’s horns. However, you would
probably be sloshed in 20 minutes…but perhaps that would be a better
state of mind in which to watch the movie. Maybe if you’re drunk it
would at least be kinda enjoyable.

Plus, there is the whole sleazy aspect of the film. We are talking
random nudity (and not good nudity, it’s all low-budget ‘80s nudity
here!) like the previous stripperella at the party mentioned above, plus
a few non-sexy sex scenes. There is also the whole subtext of incest
that pops up throughout the film. It is hinted that Tommy is actually
the son of his mom and his grandpa. Yup, how ‘bout a big old EWWWWW from
the audience, eh? I was half expecting that Tommy put the moves on his
mom, but thankfully the film didn’t go down that road!

As for the kills? They were almost an afterthought and the only
decent one worth mentioning is when a dude gets a shovel through his
noggin. Yes, it is a low-budget film but the kills took a long time
coming…too little too late in my opinion. It’s like the film couldn’t
decide if it wanted to focus on the masked killer or the satanic cult
and it ended up not giving enough attention to either. I also think too
much time was spent on Tommy’s family, including his sister, brother and
mother, instead of focusing on the supposed main character of the film,
Tommy. The only time we saw him was when he was brooding in his room,
listening to his crappy metal music and having weird dreams, or slamming
the door in his poor mom’s face.

The ending had a nice little twist as to who the killer was, but by then I was really too bored to care. I watched Hack-O-Lantern for some fun Halloween thrills, but found it more of a chore to sit through. A film with a cool name like Hack-O-Lantern deserves to be somewhat entertaining, but this was more like Crap-O-Lantern.